Before I get into the main discussion of this article, I want to share something I was emailed after I posted the Closing Thoughts update to the Grant Morrison project. Alpha of FTLFW (who I did this interview for) sent me some very enlightening information as to where "the player is the true villain of Toby Fox's games" comes from. I will transfer this over to the Grant Morrison project when I cover Chapters 3 and 4, but since that's a ways out and I want to share it, I'll put it here for now.

It seems to come from Homestuck.

Again, I've never been able to get very far into Homestuck before my head starts to hurt so I can't give my own thoughts on any of this, but Alpha tells me the basic gist of Homestuck is the main characters play a game that destroys Earth, so then they go on an adventure to create new worlds that will then destroy themselves with the same game in order to create more worlds, which will then destroy themselves to create even more worlds. Earth itself was created by the trolls destroying their world with the game, and no doubt the trolls' world was created after another world destroyed itself. Homestuck is a fractal of worlds destined to destroy themselves. What's more is the characters are all selfish children who take pleasure in creating and destroying these worlds for their entertainment.

And all this destruction only happened because you read the comic. To entertain yourself. You are the true villain of Homestuck.

Or at least that's one possible interpretation, as the more I hear about Homestuck, the more it seems Hussie's mentality while writing it was, well...

Alpha also tells me Hussie inserts himself into Homestuck, first as a joke then as an important character who admits to creating the comic but denies any responsibility for the destruction his characters have wrought. Combined with the multiple layers of reality and one being created following the destruction of another straight out of Flex Mentallo, it sounds like Hussie was also inspired by Grant Morrison.

"The only winning move is to not play" is also the moral of the Earthbound Halloween Hack, and while I don't know where exactly he said this, sources tell me Fox regrets ever making that game. Even so, using a game Fox made when he was a teenager to predict Deltarune's ending feels like people believing everything I write is going to end with a Tweeter shooting the big bad with a crappy video game.

With that out of the way, let's rag on Game Theory.

During my "the player being the villain of Deltarune makes no sense" tantrum, I called Game Theory "the second biggest source of erosion of media literacy on YouTube after goddamned CinemaSins." Before I elaborate, I'd like to direct you to this video by bobvids about CinemaSins. Specifically at the end where he says this:

The people who make and consume "Everything Wrong With" videos are trying desperately to look and feel smart. But in the end they just prove how impressively hard one can miss the entire point of why we tell each other stories in the first place. Rejecting emotional resonance doesn't make you intelligent, it disconnects you from your feelings. It makes you numb.

[...]

[CinemaSins] promote[s] intellectual intelligence as a substitute for emotional intelligence. They spread the idea that a movie can and should be judged not by whether it succeeds or fails at conveying an emotion, but whether or not someone used a superfluous prepositional phrase.

Just as CinemaSins has taught people to judge a story by how many stupid irrelevant nitpicks they can point out, MatPat has taught a bunch of kids to judge a story by how many twists and turns it takes and how many little secrets are hidden in it and not to step back, look at the big picture, and ask "What's your point?" To search for this one tiny detail that reveals the truth about everything. To miss the forest for a single tree. If you gave the man a book of Aesop's fables, his takeaway would be that the stories take place in a post-apocalyptic future where we let genetic engineering and nanomachine augmentation get out of hand which is why the animals can talk, the Greek gods are real, and geese can lay eggs made out of solid metal. And realizing this makes him smarter than the people getting distracted by this "sour grapes" nonsense because he realizes, lawl, animals can't talk and geese can't lay golden eggs.

And no, I don't think even the Nostalgia Critic has had the negative impact on media literacy that CinemaSins and Game Theory have had. He's cheesy and has some truly godawful takes from time to time, his review of The Wall being the prime example, but he at least understands art is meant to make us feel something or guide us in the real world and tries to foster a passion for film in his audience. Most of his analyses have some grounding in reality like "The characters in The Magic Voyage never shut up" and he occasionally has behind the scenes information into what the hell happened like his review of Cool World where he touches on how that movie was butchered by Hollywood executives. He's not convincing his audience that Five Nights and Freddy's 4 is the pinnacle of human culture because of two pixels in a toy chicken.

"Well, what about Cocomelon and Skibidi Toilet?" Those haven't ruined media literacy so much as kids' entire mental development, and at the very least Skibidi Toilet knows it's brainrot. CinemaSins and Game Theory both think they're deep art analysis, or at least CinemaSins will claim to be valid movie analysis until somebody calls them out on their bullshit, then they'll pull a Schrodinger's douchebag and say they're just joking around. For fuck's sake, Game Theory calls itself "the smartest show in gaming."

You might be wondering, MatPat published this video almost a year ago, why am I only talking about it now? Because frankly, I didn't watch the damn thing until I was writing that closing rant because I didn't want to give MatPat the view. And holy shit it is so much worse than this discussion made it out to be. In fact, there is something deeply wrong with his message in the video, and I don't know how nobody else picked up on it. I guess everybody was too caught up in his retirement and treating him like this icky uwu baby who never did anything to hurt anyone and the only reason he never did a theory on Deltarune Chapter 2 until he was retiring was because he didn't want to deal with toxic Deltarune fans, and not because he attached Toby Fox's name to a game he had nothing to do with because he knew the actual creators wouldn't get the clicks he wanted and got butthurt when Fox told him to not do that.

(Update 3/23/25 - Yes, I'm well aware Thor is a total rat, too, but Thor being a petulant manchild who thanked Fox for sticking up for him by shitting on Undertale's code doesn't make MatPat wrongly attributing a game to somebody more popular and acting like he was doing it and its creators a favor because nobody would have cared about it otherwise any less shitty.)

So what does the actual video entail? To be honest, I'm not sure even MatPat knows what he's getting at (again, he's just cobbling together things people have been saying since Chapter 2 released while acting like he's the first person to notice any of this stuff). In between stroking his dick over Fox acknowledging the Sans is Ness thing, he focuses almost entirely on the Snowgrave route as if to say Snowgrave's existence means everyone who plays the game is a piece of shit. He waffles between saying our choices don't matter because only the characters' choices affect anything, and saying our choices do matter because we choose to keep playing the game and making everybody suffer. According to him, we only think we're helping Kris make friends but in reality they don't actually like Kris, they only fear them because of what we've made them do. The correct choice is stop playing Deltarune and leave everybody alone, but we won't because we want to milk the game for content. And if anybody knows about milking a game for content, it's Mat "Sixty-eight videos on Five Nights at Freddy's" Pat.

He proposes that the game will end with us confronting Kris and being given a choice: either continue trying to control everyone prompting Kris to kick us out of the game, or we can do what's right, respect everybody's autonomy, and take ourselves out of the world.

Let's set aside the completely fucked up implications of his proposal for a second.

How does it make any sense to establish Lightners and Darkners living together, that the relationship between the higher and lower realities is symbiotic and they need each other, then tell us we're intruders in the lower realities? Why are the Card Kingdom Darkners upset about being abandoned by the Lightners if the higher realities are assholes for interfering with the lower realities? Shouldn't they be enjoying their freedom according to MatPat? How does auto-deleting "respect their autonomy" when the abandoned classroom and the Mercy ending of the Spamton NEO fight suggests they don't have autonomy? That toys can't do anything on their own? Why should Spamton have cared about being ignored by the Lightners instead of taking the opportunity to do his own thing? How does any of this relate to the Roaring, in which the Darkners are wiped out and the Lightners are "left to fend for themselves" without their dreams? What are the Titans? If we don't belong in this world, why does the game tell us "The world was covered in darkness" if we quit after a Game Over? What's Gaster's role in all of this? Or the bunker? What's the "Light inside your soul" spoken of in Chapter 1's credits? What does all the water symbolize? What are the major themes? What is the moral of the story? That it's wrong to... entertain ourselves? To create and appreciate art? To have dreams? Because that's "playing God"? That our presence hurts everyone around us and if we actually care about them we'll willingly leave the world before somebody else forces us out? Why did Fox bring us here if he's just going to suckerpunch us, throw us face-first into the ground while presumably yelling about "24/7 trivia and celebrity bullshit," and tell us to get lost?

Theme? Symbolism? What is this, a book report? Slap together a thumbnail of the protagonist gloating about murdering the player's stand-in (or "physical intrusion" to use more Morrison terminology) and tell everybody they're evil for playing a video game. That's what gets the kids' attention.

And before you say "Ackshually, MatPat never said you were evil for playing Deltarune, he only said you're the villain of the game," do you know what most people think of when they hear the word "villain"? Maleficent. Ursula. Gaston, Jafar, Scar, and Hades. King Candy if they're younger. Cruella DeVil and Lady Tremaine if they're old-school. Most people only know the villain of Snow White as "The Evil Queen." And just to name a few non-Disney villains, Lex Luthor, Skeletor, and Megatron. Evil bastards who need to be defeated by the heroes at the end of the story. There's a reason "villain" invokes a stronger reaction than "antagonist" and why MatPat chose it over the latter. Like, yeah, I never said MatPat was a self-serving asshole, I only said he was a weasel.

The only way any of this fits together is if Fox isn't trying to make any kind of point with Deltarune, he's just trying to get one over on everybody. To mislead us into believing he's making this world to make us happy, thank us for the money and years of emotional investment, then tell us all to go fuck ourselves. To, as Peter St. John put it, ascend to Heaven then kick away the ladder behind him.

This is probably going to be my "Turning Red doesn't touch on the cultural effect of 9/11" moment but I truly believe that if Toby Fox ended Deltarune the way MatPat proposes he will, by telling his playerbase - many of whom are struggling with depression and turning to him to bring some light into their life - that it's selfish to want a place in the world, that they bring nothing but misery to everybody else and wanting to be with them is "controlling" them, and that the best thing they could do for the world is take themselves out of it, he would kill somebody. I guess MatPat believes Fox is willing to snuff out a thousand dreams to fulfill his own, like he's fucking Griffith sacrificing the Band of the Hawk to the Godhand.

Another recurring theme in Morrison's works is that nobody really has control over their own lives. This ranges from Professor X's nihilistic questioning of the existence of free will...

... to the Archons of Nurnheim claiming "all life is jerked on the end of idiot strings"...

... to Animal Man and Starfire discussing destiny...

... to Lex Luthor seeing the very machinery of the world when he gives himself Superman's powers.

Nobody has autonomy and we are all pulling on each others' strings. We need other people to teach us woodworking, welding, programming, painting, crochet, or any other skill and provide the materials for those activities. People are always being inspired to take up a given profession after being wowed by another person's work. People die in accidents to provide resources to the rest of us. If you order something at a restaurant and the chef undercooks it, he's just ruined your week with a nice bout of food poisoning. When you accept a job offer, somebody who would have gotten that job if you hadn't applied has to keep job hunting. When somebody is blocking your way in the store, you have to go around them. When somebody calls off for work and I'm called in to cover their shift, that person just fucked me over and I now have to spend a day I intended to spend reading shuffling boxes around.

Maybe Superman should have respected Regan's autonomy and let her jump off that building.

And while we're at it, let's go back to those panels of Lennox with the insulin bottle.

Think about how many people Lennox relies on for survival. The people who manufacture the insulin, the bottles, and the needles, the people who pump the oil for the plastic and mine the metal for the needles, the truck driver who delivered the supplies to the pharmacy, and the pharmacist who handed them off to him just to name a few. Without them he'll die a slow, agonizing death. And that's just his insulin, he also needs other people for food, water, shelter, clothing, electricity, the movies he probably watches in between assassinations, and so on.

And he wouldn't hesitate to kill any of them for a quick buck.

Let's take a break from Grant Morrison and DC and look at a Marvel comic. Specifically, from Peter David's Hulk run where the Gray Hulk was the Vegas bouncer, Joe Fixit.

Most readers would agree, even if begrudgingly, that the Gray Hulk has a point, but still side with Spider-Man. Every choice comes with a risk, some foreseen and factored into the choice (driving to work always comes with the risk of somebody running a red light and hitting you), and some unexpected and needing to be adapted to along the way (you're probably not expecting a livestock truck to turn over and leave a herd of sheep blocking your normal route). But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything, ever. Maybe the answer to the trolly problem is to get somebody else to save the person tied to the second track while you hit the switch.

The only way to not affect another person's life is to not exist in the world. Most people would take that to mean we should aim to make the most of our time here and try to help others instead of mistreating them for our own selfish desires. Good intentions can always go wrong and people can still get hurt along the way, but we should still strive to create a net positive in the world. But I guess if you're MatPat your conclusion will be "Therefore, you should take yourself out of the world and never bother anyone else ever again! It's not like you'll ever create anything I deem worthy of being gifted to the Pope when you're only 23 like Toby Fox did!"

I'd tell MatPat to go fuck himself with a handful of his own shit if I didn't know he's so full of himself that he'd be into that.

I think I've finally realized why "the player is the true villain and the game is going to end with the characters kicking us out" is so popular among Deltarune theorists: it's exciting. The idea that this game you thought was about friendship and kindness is actually about how you're an asshole for playing a video game generates interest. It gets clicks. Even if MatPat knew about the Dreamtime, he knows his audience would never be interested in a philosophy lesson on the symbiosis between us and our dreams, they want their mind blown. They want the biggest, most unexpected plot twist imaginable, dammit, even if it only works if you cherry pick a few pieces from the puzzle and sweep the rest into a bin. In fact, the more out of left field it is, the better.

And that's the thing with the Morrison Theory. It answers many of the questions we have and fits the themes presented so far, and while there are variables (Gaster could be working against Fox like the Skull Knight, or trying to aid Fox while not actually working for him like the Fact. And maybe "Heaven" and "the Angel's Heaven" are both our reality and through the course of the game the characters realize the prophecy is flawed and they can't separate themselves from the higher reality) and things it doesn't explain (who's calling for help in the game code?), it at least doesn't outright contradict anything. Besides, Fox is pulling from several pools of inspiration and adding his own ideas to the mix, so of course there's going to be stuff that didn't come from a Morrison book.

But it's also kind of boring. Like, oh, the person dicking everybody around in Fox's game is actually Fox? After more than a decade of waiting for an epic showdown against the Knight, players are going to want the big bad at the end of the game to be somebody that makes them think "Holy shit!" and not "... oh."

MatPat is not an artist (thank fuck he isn't given his inability to think through the message he's sending his audience) or even an art critic. Just as the CinemaSins guys were in SEO before they started that channel, MatPat's background is in data analysis. He doesn't care about fostering an understanding of or appreciation for art, he only cares about making numbers go up. Otherwise he would have understood how insulting the shit he pulled on Pirate Software was instead of wondering why they weren't grateful to have him bury their work under Undertale and Deltarune and mislead his audience into believing Toby Fox made Heartbound because hey, he got eyes on it, right? Isn't all publicity good publicity?

And holy crap, I forgot about that time he tried to give people calcium deficiency for views, or when he thought encouraging his audience of kids and teenagers to telephone random pizza joints was a good idea.

MatPat's style was fine early on when he was just demonstrating how Mario actually moves faster than Sonic, fun math shit that's cool to think about but doesn't really affect anything. But his success with picking apart FNaF convinced him that his background as a YouTube data analyst gave him the skills to analyze the, for lack of a better word, soft side of media as well as the hard data. And what does he do when he dips his toes into literary analysis?

He shits a hole straight through the bed and promotes suicide.